QuimperlÉ is known as the Arcadia of Basse Bretagne, and certainly the name is well deserved. I have never seen a town so full of trees and trailing plants and gardens. Every wall is green with moss and gay with masses of convolvulus and nasturtium. Flowers grow rampant in QuimperlÉ, and overrun their boundaries. Every window-sill has its row of pink ivy-leafed geraniums, climbing down and over the gray stone wall beneath; every wall has its wreaths of trailing flowers.

There are flights of steps everywhere—favourite caprices of the primitive architects—divided in the middle by iron railings. Up these steps all the housewives must go to reach the market. On either side the houses crowd, one above the other, with their steep garden walls, sometimes intercepted by iron gateways, and sometimes covered by blood-red leaves and yellowing vines. Some are houses of the Middle Ages, and some of the Renaissance period, with sculptured porches and panes of bottle-glass; a few have terraces at the end of the gardens, over which clematis climbs. Here and there the sun lights up a corner of a faÇade, or shines on the emerald leaves, making them scintillate. Down the steps a girl in white-winged cap and snowy apron, with pink ribbon at her neck, carrying a large black two-handled basket, is coming on her way from market.

Having scaled this long flight of steps, you find yourself face to face with the old Gothic church of St. Michael, a grayish-pink building with one great square tower and four turrets. The porch is sculptured in a rich profusion of graceful details. Here and there yellow moss grows, and there are clusters of fern in the niches. Inside, the church was suffused with a purple light shed by the sun through the stained-glass windows; the ceiling was of infinite blue. Everything was transformed by the strange purple light. The beautiful carving round the walls, the host of straight-backed praying-chairs, and even the green curtain of the confessional boxes, were changed to royal purple. Only the altar, with its snowy-white cloths and red and gold ornaments, retained its colour. Jutting forth from the church of St. Michael are arms or branches connecting it with the village, as if it were some mother bird protecting the young ones beneath her wings. Under these wings the houses of the village cluster.

It is five o'clock in the afternoon, the sociable hour, when people sit outside their cottage doors, knitting, gossiping, watching the children play, and eating the evening meal. Most of the children, who are many, are very nearly of the same age. Clusters of fair curly heads are seen in the road. The youngest, the baby, is generally held by some old woman, probably the grandmother, who has a shrivelled yellow face—a very tender guardian.

Over the doorways of the shops hang branches of withered mistletoe. Through the long low windows, which have broad sills, you catch a glimpse of rows and rows of bottles. These are wine-shops—no rarities in a Breton village. Another shop evidently belonged to the church at one time. It still possesses a rounded ecclesiastical doorway, built of solid blocks of stone, and the walls, which were white originally, are stained green with age. The windows, as high as your waist from the ground, have broad stone sills, on which are arranged carrots and onions, coloured sweets in bottles, and packets of tobacco. This shop evidently supplies everything that a human being can desire. Above it you read: 'CafÉ on sert a boire et a manger.'

While we were in QuimperlÉ there were two musicians making a round of the town. One, with a swarthy face, was blind, and sang a weird song in a minor key, beating a triangle. The other, who looked an Italian, was raggedly dressed in an old fur coat and a faded felt hat. His musical performance was a veritable gymnastic feat. In his hands he held a large concertina, which he played most cleverly; at his back was a drum with automatic sticks and clappers, which he worked with his feet. It was the kind of music one hears at fairs. Wherever we went we heard it, sometimes so near that we could catch the tune, sometimes at a distance, when only the dull boom of the drum was distinguishable.

Whenever I think of QuimperlÉ this strange music and the spectacle of those two picturesque figures come back to memory. The men are well known in Brittany. They spend their lives travelling from place to place, earning a hard livelihood. When I was at school in Quimper I used to hear the same tune played by the same men outside the convent walls.

THE BLIND PIPER